“Please don’t start. Your father couldn’t resist all this,” she asserted, waving a hand over her torso. I could only shake my head. And she was a beautiful woman: dark brown skin, a riot of ebony curls and a regal air about her that turned heads. But to me she was the mother I wish I’d had.

“You know I was waiting for the right moment with Alba,” I explained for the hundredth time. “I didn’t want to make things weird in her last two weeks here. She was finally ready to start her business and having me try to get all in there and be like all ‘hey I’m obsessed with you’ would’ve definitely made shit weird.” I sighed and dropped onto the couch in my office with my head in my hands. “I had a whole plan. I was going to wait until her last day then call her to ask her out to dinner. Start slow. Romance her,” I pointed out, since she was the one who always told me women liked being wooed. “Court her.”

“Well, you fucked that up good.” This was accompanied by dramatic click of her tongue.

“Gee thanks, Mom,” I deadpanned, but didn’t argue because she wasn’t wrong.

“So what are you going to do when you get to Dallas? Other than save our asses for this Valle Mar thing?” Cecilia prompted with a flurry of her hand.

I didn’t even have to think about it. The words formed in my brain of their own volition.

“I’m going to get her back.”

Chapter Five

Alba

“Maybe you can bring me back one of those vaqueros?” my abuela suggested unhelpfully as I drove into the parking lot of the Sturm Foundation for a meeting with Mitzy and Muffy Sturm, the co-CEOs.

“Mimita, I don’t think I’m going to have time to go cowboy or cowgirl hunting while I’m here.” I stressed the cowgirl part because although my grandmother had been unwaveringly supportive when I came out, she and my mom sometimes conveniently forgot that me bringing a girl home was also an option.

“Maybe you can call back that potro you worked for and get yourself a millionaire instead.” My heart did that flippy thing where it dropped to my feet at the mention of Theo. Yeah, because apparently Theo, who once asked me why I couldn’t just sleep at the office on the days I worked for him, had driven to my mother’s house with the small box of stuff that I’d left on my desk, which he could’ve given to Evie when she dropped off my phone and keys.